Do you believe?

[Sliver]

Do you think we are alone in the universe or do you think the universe is full of life?

This is something I often think about. Nature doesn't do things once. If something can happen then it will happen again. I think there is extra terrestrial life, however it is a little worrying that we have no sign of it yet. Maybe advanced civilisations capable of emitting radio waves or other such communications, only arise now and again. So it might be that we are the most advanced civilisation in our local area.

All in all, Hubble reveals an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe or so, but this number is likely to increase to about 200 billion as telescope technology in space improves. Surely with 200 billion galaxies and countless planets within them, life must be in some of them.

I do fear that if extra terrestrials finds us that they will be hostile. Humans are apex predators. With our intelligence and weapons we can hunt, kill and eat anything we want on our planet. Imagine an alien species far more advanced than us visiting Earth. It could be the end of days.

Finally, how do you think finding extra terrestrial life may impact on religions? After all, holy books tell us god made man in his own image and that we are divine. So why make aliens? Will the religious just back track and say aliens are all part of gods plan? Probably.

 

[Glaucus]

Its inconceivable that there isn't life out there, just the distance and time scales are unbelievably large.

As for religion they'll find away to incorporate it so nothing will change. The extremists will call it a devils creation and the more moderates will praise it as other life forms created by God.

 

[Freakbro]

It's without doubt life will exist throughout the universe.

Whether there is complex, evolved, intelligent technological life....well, that's going to be much much rarer due to the length of time of stability required for it to evolve. It may not have even happened again in our galaxy, but given the size of the universe you would think its out there......just so far away we have no current way of finding it

 

[jsmoke]

Some people consider atheism a religion, we are so unnatural and secular now that we are so ashamed of worshipping anything. Even our ancestors used to worship all kinds of Gods.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Pretty strong first sentence for GD.

Being slightly less stupid, I think we're alone. Now. Children behave.

 

[Puzzled]

Pretty arrogant for us to think we are so special as to be the only form of intelligent life but whether are timelines match or can be worked around is one of many questions.

Neil always explains it well:

 

[kedge]

Its inconceivable that there isn't life out there.

What if mankind finds a new planet with life forms on it but those life forms are religious? lol

 

[LOAM]

It's probably statistically impossible for life to not exist or to have existed elsewhere in the known universes. The chances of meeting them though are also probably statistically impossible. It's like searching for a specific molecule on the planet that could have existed at any point in time since the big bang.

 

[adolf hamster]

the statistics speak for themselves, there must be life somewhere in that great expanse of stars it's practically a certainty.

however, our chances of meeting said life are a different story.

we could predict the chances of us meeting a machine age alien civilisation, but we're missing the one variable that we can't know unless it's too late- the half life of such a civilisation. and with a reference size of 1 we won't know the answer until we've either met an alien civilisation or we all die out, in both cases making such a probability irrelevant.

so no, i don't "believe" in aliens for the same reason i don't "believe" in pencils.

 

[Rroff]

Personally I believe we are fairly early on in the history of life emerging in this universe (never mind highly advanced life) - the conditions for more advanced life to emerge are relatively specific and low occurring despite the scale of the universe and only twice the length of time it took for life to emerge on Earth has elapsed since the last point the universe became hospitable to life - there was a brief window when life could have emerged before that but 99.99999% of any that did emerge in that time period would have been wiped out by changes to universal thermal/radiation levels.

I also suspect if we do encounter other lifeforms as advanced or more so than ourselves it won't go well.

 

[adolf hamster]

I also suspect if we do encounter other lifeforms as advanced or more so than ourselves it won't go well.

depends, we're pretty damn belligerent and we're still here. any species that could master interplanetary politics likely won't be much worse than us.

although when it comes to alien diseases your point is 100% valid.

 

[Sliver]

Lots of interesting replies guys, keep them coming. Love Neil deGrasse Tyson Monkeyman. He's such a great educator and communicates science and ideas in an enthralling way.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

There’s plenty life out there. List all the types of species out there and I bet you don’t finish the list before you die.

 

[Efour]

I believe Jesus/god created life only in Israel and 6000 years ago.

 

[Captain]

Would be very ignorant of us to believe we are the only living beings in the universe.

Life 100% does exist beyond our planet but finding it is out of our capabilities right now and most likely the same for another civilisation somewhere else.

 

[something daft already!!]

I think there may be life elsewhere in the galaxy but complex life might just be limited to very special and lucky planets. We might be the only one in the galaxy or even the universe. As far as we know, we are and Earth is the only planet with life of any sort on, so we should be doing an awful lot more to look after it.

 

[CREATIVE!11]

I don't care. #yolo m8

But I remember watching a documentary on this, if you look at it in terms of the raw mathematics. The number of planets that apparently exist in our universe is some retarded billion billion billion or something.

Statistically there is a decent chance at least something is out there.

 

[Rroff]

The number of planets that apparently exist in our universe is some retarded billion billion billion or something.

Vast numbers though are gas giants or balls of rock that are either way too hot, way too cold or way too exposed to radiation, etc. even those in the hospitable zone are often tidally locked or other things like that which reduce their chance of supporting life or limit what kind of life could emerge. Then there are those that might be in the perfect place and condition but their parent star is too short lived for any civilisation to emerge and survive long enough to come to anything of consequence.

It isn't impossible that there are barely single digit numbers of planets per galaxy that could support any kind of life that could become remotely advanced.

 

[Hades]

Simply based on mathematical probability I believe life emerges fairly frequently (still very rare but considering the number of planets there will be many, many planets where life evolves in each galaxy).

However I also believe that there are certain challenges which usually result in that life being destroyed or simply ebbing away before they become advanced enough to be noticed. We are about to face one such challenge in being out competed by our own technology.

 

[Sliver]

I believe Jesus/god created life only in Israel and 6000 years ago.

Why? What's the empirical evidence for this assertion?